All the World Was Still
by The Lark Ascending
Summary: Nine months later, a Selkie visits the new captain of the Flying Dutchman. PART TWO. . . TBC?
1. Chapter 1

And all the world was still, after she had gone.

The sky was never so serene, yet colourless. He had never known the briny vapours of the sea to opiate his senses. But he could not deny that, while it did not comfort him, it sent a shiver of pleasure up his spine (at least in remembrance of that sensation) to recall that he had proven himself very much alive under the stimulation of her touch.

It was not for his heart that he feared: the subsistence of that vital organ he felt with a painful certainty each day and all night long. His grief and longing for her had not subsided with the passing of seconds, minutes, hours, or months. He had toyed with the idea that he was connected to her, open to her thoughts and feelings through some loophole in this supernatural dimension. The fullness of heart that he felt when by rights he was hollow inside…

Was he really alone?

A shepherd of souls has ample time to ponder such a question. Like any other, the captain of the _Flying Dutchman _is charged with duties that try the physical faculties and wear on the body as the tide erodes the coastland. Unlike any other, however, this captain is only part mortal: his body does not tire, his strength does not fail him, and his spirit does not wane.

As he wrestles and writhes at the helm, his greatest struggle is with his raging passions. His faith in her is unshakeable; he has doubted no one but himself, till now. His heart brims with memories of her, and he has feared only the cooling of his once-hot blooded veins, till now.

During the first weeks of separation, he remembered her physical being with such clarity and precision that the image of her, the sensation of her skin and the scent of her – no, the _taste _of her essence wrapped around him like a cocoon, as it were, shielding him from all else. For that time, their physical bond was so all-encompassing that when she came to him in dreams (he needed no sleep, but dreams he craved) he awoke in his hammock drenched with sweat, his breeches wet through with the very juice of life that _she_ had sapped from him.

But now such dreamland trysts were at an end. True, his dreams were more peaceful for it, and filled instead with longing of a different kind, expectant and strangely sweet, which left him hopeful and trembling when he woke. Perhaps it was just yesterday that he had emerged from this subconscious state with the unshakeable conviction that he was sharing her day to day experiences, or rather her emotional responses to these experiences. At any rate, having taken their spiritual closeness for a soothing balm to the restlessness of his soul, the most devastating blow fell when he abruptly ceased to be aware of her in this extraordinary, nigh telepathic sense.

His devastation was complete when he had mulled over all that had visited him in dreams of late, and reached one earth-shattering conclusion: she was carrying their child.

In light of which, the probable import of this utter stillness between them nearly broke his erstwhile heart.

Will Turner's father wandered on deck in search of his captain and only son; his heavy tread disturbed the formerly impenetrable silence. Will had often watched his father go about shipboard, dispensing orders to the crew in much the same droll manner in which he now addressed his son.

"If ye give up now, I reckon we be doomed anyway. I reckon ye know it, too."

Though he did not let it show on his magically ageless yet decidedly hoary visage, Bill Turner felt something stir in the general vicinity of his heart when he met the deep, dark wells that had become of his son's once-warm brown eyes. Mayhap his soul was still cold as the briny depths, but each time he had witnessed Will's tender care for their ghostly passengers, Bill Turner had felt himself thaw a wee bit more round the edges.

"You don't understand," said Will. "I could feel her until just a few moments ago. Now it's as if she's gone. What can it mean? Has she lost faith in me already? Is she – is it possible that –"

"No. So long as you be immortal, so be she, as the keeper o' yer heart. So goes the way o' things."

Will slumped against the helm as if in relief. His father wandered the quarterdeck till he came to rest on a barrel by the starboard bulwarks.

"But why this placid calm? I feel something… different, as if we were not in another realm at all but back in Port Royale on a hazy summer's evening."

"Well, shiver me timbers," remarked Bill Turner dryly.

The _Flying Dutchman _continued into the pacific waters of the night, rocking almost imperceptibly from side to side in a gentle, lulling rhythm. Will later felt that he had been very nearly persuaded to sleep, as if a blanket of darkness had come within a hair's-breadth of snuffing the flame of his consciousness. Somewhere amidships, a crab scuttled across deck: Bill Turner watched it with one eye as it climbed the portside bulwarks and promptly launched itself overboard.

Not a moment later, a great splash wakened both father and son from some mutually somnambulant state.

Faster than you can say 'aye, matey' they were back to back with weapons drawn. A sleek, dark shape had flung its silver-grey body onto the quarterdeck, and lay quivering at their feet. Bill Turner lifted his short dagger to stab it through the chest, but the queer thing gave a hoarse, almost feminine cry, and Will raised his hand to stop his father.

Bill Turner staggered back and watched in amazement as his son threw himself to the deck beside this moonlight creature, which appeared to be a grey seal. As if the heavens themselves strove to shine on this side of the underworld for one blessed moment, Will's face seemed illumined by some silvery light, though perhaps it radiated from the sealskin.

The warmth seeped back into the eyes of Will Turner, captain of souls lost at sea, as he peered into the round hazel irises of this slippery, silvery, curvaceous creature.

Stranger things had happened. He whispered to the seal,

"Elizabeth?"

_TBC_


	2. Chapter 2

The sound of the surf was calming after the claustrophobic silence of the seaside cottage.

But it was not a comfortable calm that she felt, standing on the high cliff with the great, yawning gulf before her. Perhaps the scent of saltwater had always had the opposite effect on her senses – its pungent ripeness she had thought almost lewd when, as a girl aboard ship, she had first caught the salt spray on her tongue.

In intervening years, the wild beast under her corseted bosom had raged and writhed at the behest of the changeable, moody sea. Her heart was human, undoubtedly, but often subject to the whims of her passions, which were not altogether so. It was this insatiable need for fulfilment of what was promised, whispered in her ear like the gentle caress of a Caribbean sea breeze, when the salt spray filled her nostrils and invaded her whole being; it was this crazed wanderlust that had driven her to break with society and forsake the culture of her parents, that she might end her adventure in his embrace (for all adventures must come to an end, if the adventurers hope for a happy one); so inevitably it was this, too, that drove her to seek him once more on the high seas, by any means imaginable.

Many moons ago she had felt the current of unrest turn tide and ebb from her body, when at last she was bound to him through the ancient rite of the marriage sacrament. The persistent call of the sea had faded from her eardrums, where it ever seemed to linger wooingly, and despite the blood and grime that caked her sun-baked skin, her heart swelled with affection and longing for a future happiness of decidedly domestic character. Too late came her self-discovery, she'd feared, when grief nearly overcame her; had she found some other way to calm the storm that flooded her veins, he had not striven in vain for those he so dearly loved.

Now, faced with the prospect of waiting for her otherworldly lover and lawful husband, on whose memory she was to base the next ten years of her existence while remaining a model of patience and goodness…

_Like Jack Sparrow's gone off rum, I am._

Elizabeth simply did not equate faithfulness with complacency.

Her restlessness had returned with a cruel vengeance midway her pregnancy, calling her from sleep and pricking the soles of her feet with needles, seemingly, as she was never still for a moment but her very bones itched for the salt water.

At first, she hadn't feared their long separation. She had felt him to be close by her always, especially in dreams, and for that time he'd not failed to satisfy even the demands of her flesh, a phenomenon which she dared not question (or hesitate to enjoy - she had never known such carnal pleasures, and ever yearned for more). But at some crucial point these midnight fantasies began to leave her wanting, thirsting after yet another life-giving substance. Countless times she'd been recalled from dreamland by the clamour of the sash as it rattled in the casement at her bedroom window. At first she had cowered in the featherbed, arms crossed over her swollen belly in a fierce, protective gesture meant to shield his unborn child from danger. As her confinement wore on, however, and her restlessness increased, it seemed she grew more daring again, as if she'd regained some part of the foolhardiness that had sustained her in recent voyages.

Just this morning she had risen in the chill grey dawn, attracted by force almost to the white curtains that stirred auspiciously with the impetus of a sea breeze. She felt the moist air between her legs through her thin cotton shift like a seductive caress, brushing the tender, swelling flesh of her inner thighs and passing through the centre of her being. Her feet were bare and overly sensitive to the cold, hard texture of the floorboards; she thought she would do much better to bury her toes in the wet sand, very close to the ebbing tide.

With this intention Elizabeth drew back the curtains, threw up the sash and pushed open the shutters. She was not surprised when she saw the large white crab that sat on the stone sill just below her reach; she followed after it when it dropped to the ground and hurried away towards the cliffs.

This hard-shelled emissary of the sea goddess had led her here, to the high precipice from which she had often watched ships pass back and forth on the horizon. Plagued by memories and haunted by daydreams of his return, filled with such sweet poignancy that her heart ached for him and for their inevitable reunion, she had remained relatively immune to the call of the sea till now. Now, even as she eagerly marked the passing of the days, and the time of her lying-in grew closer. But the shackles she'd worn in self-defence fell away from her as the wind whipped around her hastily cloaked skirts and displaced wisps of her honey-coloured hair from its thick plait.

When the large white crab tugged at her hem with one enormous pincer, Elizabeth did not hesitate to lift it in her hands. Why she dared be so bold, she could not say; sure, she was no Calypso; but she had, at any rate, plenty of experience in the way of the faerie. A woman who kept her husband's heart encased in a chest by her bed could hardly afford scepticism.

As she held the crustacean and stroked its smooth, stone-like shell, the wind began to change and the rising tide grew more agitated, embroiled, as it were, in the conflicting currents.

Whether for the mischievous east wind nipping at her heels or a whisper from the mythical creature in her grasp, a moment later Elizabeth found herself on the sand far below. Though it felt as if she had flown, she saw that her ankles were bloodied. The crab scuttled noisily down the great shale-and-granite cliffs behind her; when it passed on its way into the water, she imagined that it beckoned to her.

All before her was churning, frothing, gasping, heaving seascape - her heart pounded in her chest as she felt herself forcibly drawn to the mysterious darkness that revealed itself for an instant on the crest of each wave. It seemed she saw a glint of silver there, hidden but tantalisingly within reach; the crab clicked its pincers one after the other, as if impatient with her dallying. Inside her belly, she felt Will's child begin to stir and kick. _Now,_ her unborn baby seemed to say, _before it's too late._

Like the release of a cork from a keg of rum long lost at sea, Elizabeth felt a dam burst at the entrance of her womanhood. Liquid heat flowed from her body, running down her legs and quickly saturating her nightclothes. She gasped and clutched her stomach; a bitter sob caught in her throat. _No! Not without him. Not without Will. _

The crab disappeared on the undertow of a high wave, and in that instant Elizabeth saw the Selkie.

She rose from the tumultuous surf in the shape of a woman, holding her shimmery skin over one brown arm. She spoke:

"Here be your skeen, Eleesabet Swann. Do wit it what you weel to find him you seek - but hurry! der be no taime t' waste, Eleesabet Swann."

Elizabeth staggered forward and plunged herself into the angry waters.

"Tía Dalma?"

As a familiar, inscrutable smile spread over the dark woman's features, Elizabeth realised the foolishness of her words.

"Here, Eleesabet. Take what be rightfully yours."

Had a single soul born witness and lived to tell of what came to pass at sunrise that morn between the goddess of the sea and the child of the faerie, he would have told long afterwards of the two naked, beautiful women who, before his very eyes, became silvery, soft, slippery creatures resembling seals. He would have recalled with dreamy eyes how they swam into the dawn and disappeared in a flash of green light.

(In fact, Captain Jack Sparrow did live to tell of it, but no one believed him because he was inveterately drunk on rum to the end of his days.)


End file.
